


only the dead have seen the end of war

by possibilityleft



Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-16
Updated: 2014-11-16
Packaged: 2018-02-25 14:12:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2624705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/possibilityleft/pseuds/possibilityleft
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After it's all over, Rachel can't quite remember how to care about normal things.  <em>Rachel had clothes in her closet that she couldn't bring herself to wear.  They would show off the leotard she didn't have to wear anymore, but she felt vulnerable without it.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	only the dead have seen the end of war

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Leidolette](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leidolette/gifts).



> Title from a quotation by Plato.
> 
> I found this prompt perusing the requests at Gen Fic Swap and it really touched me, so I had to write it down.
> 
> This is tagged Major Character Death for a reason, as I took Rachel's death and gave it to someone else. If anyone wants to know the specific character in advance, I put it in the endnote.

It took Rachel a really long time to figure out how to care again. Of course, she was good at play-acting. No one would have ever suspected that she was a member of a Yeerk-resistant group, not until it was safe to admit it. For months, all of them had played their usual roles. Rachel had clothes in her closet that she couldn't bring herself to wear. They would show off the leotard she didn't have to wear anymore, but she felt vulnerable without it. That was ridiculous, really; clothes wouldn't stop her from morphing. But there was something about the feel of the fabric tight against her skin that she couldn't give up.

She knew that no one thought she'd be able to cope with the war ending. Cassie went to therapy and kept trying to get Rachel to schedule her own sessions. She caught Jake looking for her sometimes, when she saw him on TV giving an interview. She'd been there for a long time -- his warrior on the right, his conscience on the other. Cassie stayed. Rachel didn't.

She went home and tried to ignore the way her family looked at her, as if she'd become a stranger. She dreamed over and over about her death. It amazed her when she woke up alive, tangled in the sheets and sweating. Her sister told her that she cried out a lot in her sleep, but no one came to wake her, not after she'd almost broken her mom's wrist in her sleep-befuddled state.

Marco called her Xena, Warrior Princess, on TV, and she hated him. She'd never really hate Marco -- she couldn't hate any of them; they were family. But she wanted to slap him, she wanted to stomp him with her elephant feet and then pull him to his feet and cry into his shoulder and make him promise never to mention it again.

She refused to give interviews. Her mom hired someone to keep reporters away, but they still took pictures and put them on the magazines. "Rachel Berenson, Ice Queen, Animorph," she read when she was in the corner store, on top of a blurry picture of her coming out of the school. At least she had dressed nice for the photo.

When she wasn't having nightmares, she was jolting awake at night, certain she'd heard tapping on her windowsill. But Tobias was never going to do that again. Everyone had been so worried about how Rachel would cope with the war ending, but Rachel had worried about Tobias. Even when they were done fighting, he had no real home to go to. And she didn't think it was very likely that he would become a human nothlit and give up the ability to fly. She couldn't blame him. But it turned out, she'd worried for nothing. He didn't have that choice to make.

Sometimes when she was tired Rachel thought about morphing and running away. She didn't want to go to the mall anymore, or spend time with her friends who barely knew her. None of it seemed to matter. But if she had an animal brain alongside her own, it would have its own concerns. She could go live in Tobias's habitat and catch his mice. She could go to Africa and be the elephant no ivory-poacher dared to touch. She could be anything. She wasn't sure she wanted to be Rachel.

The feelings did pass. She agreed to meet the President, and she went back to school, and she went outside instead of sitting on the couch all weekend and watching trashy television. She went back to gymnastics. She met someone. She hadn't felt that fluttery feeling in her stomach since Tobias. They weren't going to get married or anything, but he never asked her about her old life, just helped her build a new one. She didn't talk to any of the other Animorphs. It seemed easier.

Jake came to her first, when he heard about Ax's ship going missing, and Rachel was horrified by the glee that rose from somewhere deep within her. She fisted her hands at her sides and said, "We have to go." The blood was rushing in her ears. She knew her mom was going to cry, but she couldn't care. In an instant, she tossed her new life away.

Cassie had been right to worry about her, and Jake looked relieved, but also a little guilty. She smiled at him.

"What are you waiting for?" she said. "Let's go rescue Ax."

And Rachel went willingly again into war.

**Author's Note:**

> For those of you looking for the character death spoiler, it is Tobias.


End file.
